


original work collection

by buries



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-03-30 16:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3943630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>i've written numerous snippets of original work and thought i would share these scenes. most of these were written in 2012/2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. untitled

**Author's Note:**

> **please note all characters and settings belong to me unless otherwise stated.**
> 
> sometimes i like to do random free-writing based on some prompts. this was one of them. [this](http://finnicks.tumblr.com/post/21906199409) was my inspiration.
> 
> a girl has the ability to travel through time.

“Why is it that you get one of those fancy —” and his voice turns incoherent. It sounds as though he’s been submerged under water — or maybe she has, as his voice comes as what she would imagine a blur sounding like — and she knows that when the sounds around her become muted like this, she’s travelling. 

She turns around, searching for him, finding that he’s standing behind her, saying, with much coherency, “— things?” She’s missed a portion of what he’s said. 

“What?” she blinks at him. She stops walking. Her brows are raised, her eyes wide, and she knows the expression on her face is one complete annoyance. She feels it creep along every inch of her skin. “You want to be able to travel through time? You want the anxiety that comes with it?” She raises her eyebrows even higher for emphasis. He stays silent, looking at her, dumbfounded. She wonders if he can even hear her. “It’s not a walk in the park, you know! Shit happens. And if that shit doesn’t make sense, it’s my fault. You get that?”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Then, he lets out a breath of air, lips flapping together like a fish out of water. He looks like one, she thinks, one without the scales and the ability to swim and survive in the deep, blue sea. He can barely survive now. “There’s no need to get so nasty,” he says. He shakes his head, moving away from her. “Sheesh.” He begins to walk off, leaving her standing with her arms by her sides, defeat crawling up her spin as if it were a ladder.

By the time she begins to move, he’s already a long distance ahead of her. It’s his long legs, she knows; they take him further than her own ability can at times. She doesn’t run to catch up, but there’s a speed to her steps as she tries to make her shorter legs cross the distance he’s allowed to come between them.

“Can you wait up?” she sighs. He continues to walk, as if he didn’t hear her, and she thinks he hasn’t, but it’s when his long strides turn into tiny shuffling of his feet, where they barely move, let alone pick themselves up from the concrete, that she realises he has. Beside him, she straightens her shoulders, rolling them. She makes a point of not looking at him. “Thanks,” she mumbles.

“Anytime,” he says. He’s not looking at her, either. They walk silently for a few moments before she sees him, from her peripheral, turn to look at her suddenly. “Hey,” he says, pointing his finger at her, “you now owe me for that favour. Take your little self back to the past and get me some lottery numbers.” She looks at him with an arched eyebrow. He shrugs his shoulders, “Hey,” he says, “it’s what good friends do.”


	2. poorly imitated after you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> arturia is a witch hunter and morgan is the witch. they like to have a little fun together.
> 
> inspiration: [this](http://finnicks.tumblr.com/post/25438685848/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-who-is-the-fairest-of) and rainbowfic @ dreamwidth's prompt: _Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit/Is poorly imitated after you (LIII)._

At first, the mirror cracks. It’s barely noticeable, the size of a hairline, but she sees it without a doubt. When she presses her finger against the smooth glass, she expects to feel the smallest of dents on the surface. Instead, her finger bends back, of its own accord, and a piece of glass, shaped as a spear, threads itself through the skin. It looks like an icicle for only a moment before she sees, very clearly, the clear reflection within the tiny sliver of glass.

Arturia pulls away from the long mirror, taking a large step backward. It’s long enough to propel her to the other side of the room. Flat back against it, her shoulder blades press hard against the plaster; the rough surface feels as though it holds a knife in its own grip. She wraps her smarting finger tightly within the palm of her uninjured hand. She can feel the blood stick to the lifelines of her palm, sticky and cold, as if she were made of ice itself. 

She stares at her reflection in the mirror. Even though her back is pressed against the wall as if frightened, her slender figure still possesses an edge that not even he can scare out of her. A tiny bit of the glass is missing, right above her dark eyes, causing the image of her to be an imperfect replica. It’s then that the glass seems to press further into her finger, drawing her gaze away from the image of herself.

When she opens her palm, like a flower blossoming in spring, she sees the glass blade has transformed into the smallest of splinters. Beneath her finger, as she swipes flesh against flesh, the skin of her palm is clean and clear. 

Picking the glass out from the flesh of her finger, she holds it up to the bright light above her. It’s small, almost like a diamond, or a grain of sand, yet, she’d seen it in the shape of a tiny blade. Glancing up, reflected back is a small, little blade, as wide as a thin piece of string, yet, the shape in her hand doesn’t fit what she sees. When she looks back down, she’s rolling a mere tiny square of glass between her fingers. Pressing her thumb against the cut of her finger, she finds that only a line of red smears itself against her olive skin.

She knows the sign of a curse when she sees one. Even if it dissipates away, like smoke, it lingers like a bad aftertaste. What she sees reflected in the mirror is merely an illusion; what she holds in her hand is the stark, cold reality. It’s a message she’s gotten loud and clear; he’s gone as far as sacrificing a tiny part of her mirror in order to send it.

She avoids the mirror — any mirror — for the rest of the day. She follows him lazily like a black cat throughout the town, wandering into the holes he graces with his unfortunate presence, all the while smug as he tries to shake her off. He doesn’t lose her until the sky turns light pink and she purposefully takes a left instead of a right.

At night, she tracks him. He leaves footprints, unnoticeable to those around him but clear as if it were white painted on black, as he makes his way from the warm heart of the town to its cold skirts. There’s less people out there, more growth of nature, and she knows that it calls to him, like the siren does to men.

It has never been difficult to track an ass. There’s a farm out west of the city, lingering on the skirts of the border, where she knows there’s plenty. Thick-hided and with even thicker hair, the donkeys are a dark guardian for the tiny little house that’s made of shambles and dust. It’s dead; the garden is a mess of weeds and thin, tangling branches, and the lawn is unkempt. Even the gravel she walks upon is creaking beneath her feet, like the walls and the floorboards and the insides of the little house before her do. 

She doesn’t ascend the many steps to the porch. The house sits on stilts, stretching itself away from the land it sits on.

With her crossbow in hand, she maneuvers her way across the grounds as the sun hides itself away behind the mountains of the earth and the moon climbs to the top of the sky. It doesn’t take long for a light to burst and resurrect the dead of the night. She blinks a few times, finds the confident strides that characterise her prowl stumble as she loses, for only a moment, her eyes. The wards around the house work for those who aren’t trained to see them; a house doesn’t sit in the middle of this land, yet, Arturia can see it as clear as she can her own shadow in the daylight. The house hides behind the skirts of the sun but reaches its luminous arms from beneath its legs at night.

It’s as though the house lowers itself on its stilts. She can see into the house, past the thin, loosely knit curtains. Coming to stand at the brightly lit window, she positions her crossbow, lining it up with her eye. The tip of the arrow, from this point, touches against the glass. If she moves it a little to the left, it’ll touch his neck. But she leaves it where it is, to skim across the flesh of his shoulder, and to destroy the image he’s building brick by brick, bone by bone, before him.

Morgan moves, only an inch, pressing a hand beneath that of his dark eye. The shadows beneath there form bags bigger than the ones that hold her belongings. Everything about him hides itself during the stark light of the day, but comes out from its hiding places at night.

She aims the arrow, counts to ten, giving him the time to sense her, which she knows he doesn’t, for his guard is down, as cats have better things to do at night, like linger in the shadows, in bushes, and beneath the warmth of cars, and lets the arrow fly. The mirror shatters and she knows it cuts him deeper than the glass blade that had pierced her.


	3. untitled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this was written for [my 2013 nano](http://currency.dreamwidth.org/2637.html). it was based on the apocalypse, with the horsemen coming to town. this is between two of the horsemen.
> 
> inspiration: _i have decided to stick with love. hate is too great a burden to bear._

Oh, Saint Hermione, with her sickeningly sweet touch. Along open wounds her fingers press, pads the needle sowing the thread into the skin. She takes from the rich and gives to those who yearn for it.

Her gaze settles upon you, in due time, after it expends itself across those who are lesser, shorter in stature and power, than you. “Sister,” she smiles, slowly, smugly, but it’s nonetheless sweet. “I hadn’t thought you were the type to make hospital visits. You do like to send people to them, after all.”

“This is a special delivery,” you say, the red lipstick coating your lips feels heavy as you smile.

The corners of her pale pink lips fall for only a moment. The smile is still sickly to your eyes, but the sweetness has changed into something more sour. Saint Hermione looks at you with a fear in her eyes; it’s a spark you can see as bright as the sun bursting from the clouds on a dreary and dark day. You’ve always been able to see it. It’s how you tear down kingdoms and leave them kingless.

She takes too long to compose herself, longer than she should. Saint Hermione’s halo used to be around her neck, but it’s begun to ascend up her throat to the crown of her hair. Her arms cross over her chest. You can’t help but think of how mortal it is, needing to use her limbs as a way to protect herself from you. “What have you done?”

“I’ve done nothing,” you say with forced upon innocence. Bat your thick, long eyelashes, clasp your hands in front of your torso, and watch as her brows furrow together. Her mouth twists in a way that makes her even more pretty. Her dark eyes watch you carefully, not blinking.

“You’ve done something,” she says, slowly. Her brows furrow ever so closely together. The dull light within the hospital does nothing but highlight the scars across her olive skin, you think. They hide the ones on yours, the white lines disappearing into the palest of flesh. She’s the sun and you’re the moon, or perhaps you’re the darkness. Iva reigns over all, like some god in the sky, while Narkissa slithers into the night with a sick, sweet kiss. Saint Hermione makes them hungry.

“You’re asking the wrong questions, Hermione,” you say. “And to the wrong person.”

“You’re an errand runner now?” she juts her hip and clenches her fist. Hermione’s anger makes her hungry, just as she makes those around her yearn for her touch or her presence or the mere sound of her voice.

“Narkissa never likes to do her own handiwork,” you say. Narkissa doesn’t like to do anything at all but strive for the saintly-like stories Hermione has woven around her. The woman who heals the sick and treats the wounded is looked down upon, rather than admired, like a common leech. Hermione makes them starve for her. She plays with her food, literally; it leaves a sour aftertaste in your mouth, the way she’s begun to poke at her dessert with a tender touch rather than a sharp stab of the fork.

“I didn’t realise we were taking the whole mule thing seriously,” she says. She takes a step forward, the dark pencil skirt moves like water around her legs. “If Narkissa wishes to speak to me, she can do so herself.” That’s always been the problem with Hermione. She sticks to the rules none of you play by. Rather than act like a queen upon a throne, she’s someone touchable and reachable.

“I’m not speaking for Narkissa,” you say. “I’m sending you a warning.”

Hermione stands before you, arms still crossed, but she keeps the distance. Unlike the snake you are, she doesn’t strike, nor close it. “Acantha,” she says, tone somewhat warning, but it doesn’t strike a chord with you. She plays a game with the crops and the harvest; you worry that it’ll end in a famine — and not the type you yearn for, to drive those you play with into your hands like putty, but the type that will leave Hermione thirsty and starved. _What have you done?_ lingers in the air. She doesn’t need to speak it for you to be fully aware it’s been yelled across the chasm between you two.

Turning your head ever so slightly, you glance at a room you’re standing outside of. It’s dully lit and cramped; the four beds are taken. You can’t see much from here, but you don’t need to look to know what she’s about to see. Instead, you watch her. Her copper hair is silky. It shines like a beacon. You like shiny things. Hermione, Saint Hermione, shines like a beacon of hope for the puppets you flay alive. Their strings are looped around your long fingers, the blood red of your nails push and pull at them, making them run, making them hide, the snarl of your lips making them scream. But Hermione shines in a light that brings them peace, dulls their screams and shouts, and lowers their arms from a frightful stance into a lulled sense of reprieve. 

Even now, in the stark white halls of the hospital, where the coughs of the sick echo loudly around the room, she shines like a beacon of hope. Her hands are thick with blood, just like yours, but there’s something about Saint Hermione that makes her …

When you glance above her hairline you see the dull shine that takes to Iva’s dark mane slither away from your gaze. Her long hair shines, clean and lively, beneath the luminescent dull globes of the hospital hallway. 

She hasn’t realised she’s standing before a room, leading into a small, cramped room. In a bed, painted with red, is someone you know you shouldn’t know of. Hermione’s mouth is wide open, the colour draining from her face.

You think of her hair, so silky and clean, soft to the touch that it’d make anyone yearn for more of a taste. Blood matts yours, as it should. No one would expect less of vengeance itself.


	4. time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems he hasn’t been able to forget me, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> freeform writing, inspired by the prompt "time."
> 
> all characters belong to me. written 15/12/2013.

There’s something in the way he walks that hasn’t changed. As I watch him make his way through the bar, I find myself lost in the past. It feels as though a milennia hasn’t wedged its way between us. It’s as though I’m standing before him, a minute after I turned my back upon him, but had chosen differently; to turn around and see him smirk, one last time, as he leans into the man sitting at the bar. The man doesn’t turn his stool, but seems to recoil, his upper body moving away from him as he invades his personal space.

The smirk stays upon his face as he speaks softly to the man. It isn’t long before he stops, presses a hand comfortingly against the man’s broad shoulder, and seems to squeeze, if a little too strongly. His grip has always been tough, one that not even I have been able to shake, not even after all these years to live without him and forget him.

I stand by the pool table, cue in hand, chalk at the top, rubbing it against the base. A woman beside me nudges me with her elbow softly and nods towards the chalk. “Think you’re all chalked up, sweetie,” she says. I hand her the chalk, to which she does the same thing, rubbing the base of her cue with it, but for a shorter time than I. She disappears from my peripheral as he enters it.

I bend down, arch my back, and place the cue in position. The wood is smooth against my fingers as I try to aim the ball. The cue moves as though it’s a part of me, an extra limb, and the stroke I pull with it sends the ball careening to the corner of the table. It hits the ball by the net, not into it, but further away from it.

There’s warm laughter from my side. My friend laughs, triumphantly, a soft sort of victory, but it’s not as warm as the one by my side. I rise, standing at my full height, almost towering over him.

It seems he hasn’t been able to forget me, either.


	5. running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He runs without moving his legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: running.
> 
> all characters belong to me. written 16/12/2013.

He runs without moving his legs.

Sometimes, he can be right beside her, shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, hip to hip, and he'll be far away, a ghost beside her. Like a thin sheet, she can feel him, but she can't see him; the threads that make him whole make him invisible, too. She can catch him with her hands, but he slips away as if he's made of grains of sand rather than long pieces of thread. He escapes between the seams of her palms, slides through the cracks of her fingers, and never nestles in the lifelines of her palms.

She doesn't understand how he can sometimes be so transparent, even to her eye. He stands tall, shoulders broad, chest even so, with long legs and arms and fingers. His hair, the colour of mud, is short and dark and cuts her palm as if a blade with how stiff it is with a thick coat of gel. His eyes are green, sometimes the darkest she has ever seen, the dampest of moss that grows on the trunks of trees. A faint scar runs from the corner of his nostril to the top of his lip; even then, the faintest of lines, is darker than his entire image.

Despite how dark he is, with his olive skin and patches of dirt on the knees of all of his jeans, he slips away from her as if a wisp of smoke. Light and fragile, tentative, he doesn't linger for long. She's planted roots, with her blonde hair and short legs and painted toes, and sees the vines curl up her ankle and stay there, entwined with others that wrap their way up her legs and to her torso, sometimes intertwining, as if holding hands. She welcomes the vines, the warmness of them, the coarseness of their touch is something of a beacon of hope for her. 

He doesn't. He runs without moving his legs. He cuts them away with a blade and jumps from their warm embrace. Where they area beacon of hope for her, they are a beacon of doom for him. She has never understood why; he lingers out in the woods nearby, touches the vines that wrap around the porch pillars as if they are something to be admired, but he steps away and shudders from what tries to grab him with a firm grip.

Not even she can wrap her long fingers around his forearm for too long. He slithers away, writhes in her hold, whether light or hard, and steps away from her with a long stride that has never been struck against her. It leaves her cold and chilled; not even the warmth of the vines that root her to where she is can take the sharp sting away. She takes a step toward him and he takes one back; hers are small and tentative while his are strong and firm. They almost cover the expanse of the globe with how much of a gap he places between them.

There's distance between them. Long, windy distance that only a car and restless nights of staying awake behind the wheel can bridge between them. But there's distance - and she's not just talking about the emotional, either. He runs to places where she cannot follow, on legs, thoughts, and dreams that she cannot think to match nor intercept. He is always miles ahead of her, a blur in the future, a shadow in her peripheral. 

His legs are long and his strides are strong and powerful, but she sees them shake every once in a while with nerves. She wonders what from. She never thinks to question him. Is it of fear? Fear of losing her? Fear of losing them both? Fear of losing himself? 

He is quieter these days; the phone calls, when he runs, are shorter. A large wedge of time sits between them; she goes days and weeks and months without hearing the roughness of his voice. The tone is like a calloused thumb, familiar to her ear, rough around the edges, but there's heart somewhere in its core.

She can't call him. The number disconnects with a jarring sound that runs as fast as her heart, if not quicker. It's as though she's racing, something, something other than time. He runs and she cannot follow; her legs are short, her strides are shier, timid, unequal in the length that they encompass. But where his falter at moments, hers are powerful with confidence. She knows she'll find him.


	6. jealous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheesh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: jealous.
> 
> all characters belong to me. written 02/01/2014.

“Why is it that you get one of those fancy —” and his voice turns incoherent. It sounds as though he’s been submerged under water — or maybe she has, as his voice comes as what she would imagine a blur sounding like — and she knows that when the sounds around her become muted like this, she’s travelling. 

She turns around, searching for him, finding that he’s standing behind her, saying, with much coherency, “— things?” She’s missed a portion of what he’s said. 

“What?” she blinks at him. She stops walking. Her brows are raised, her eyes wide, and she knows the expression on her face is one complete annoyance. She feels it creep along every inch of her skin. “You want to be able to travel through time? You want the anxiety that comes with it?” She raises her eyebrows even higher for emphasis. He stays silent, looking at her, dumbfounded. She wonders if he can even hear her. “It’s not a walk in the park, you know! Shit happens. And if that shit doesn’t make sense, it’s my fault. You get that?”

He’s quiet for a long moment. Then, he lets out a breath of air, lips flapping together like a fish out of water. He looks like one, she thinks, one without the scales and the ability to swim and survive in the deep, blue sea. He can barely survive now. “There’s no need to get so nasty,” he says. He shakes his head, moving away from her. “Sheesh.” He begins to walk off, leaving her standing with her arms by her sides, defeat crawling up her spin as if it were a ladder.

By the time she begins to move, he’s already a long distance ahead of her. It’s his long legs, she knows; they take him further than her own ability can at times. She doesn’t run to catch up, but there’s a speed to her steps as she tries to make her shorter legs cross the distance he’s allowed to come between them.

“Can you wait up?” she sighs. He continues to walk, as if he didn’t hear her, and she thinks he hasn’t, but it’s when his long strides turn into tiny shuffling of his feet, where they barely move, let alone pick themselves up from the concrete, that she realises he has. Beside him, she straightens her shoulders, rolling them. She makes a point of not looking at him. “Thanks,” she mumbles.

“Anytime,” he says. He’s not looking at her, either. They walk silently for a few moments before she sees him, from her peripheral, turn to look at her suddenly. “Hey,” he says, pointing his finger at her, “you now owe me for that favour. Take your little self back to the past and get me some lottery numbers.” She looks at him with an arched eyebrow. He shrugs his shoulders, “Hey,” he says, “it’s what good friends do.”


End file.
